Welcome to the first bi-weekly chat of May! As the first was international workers day, we're talking about work. So, let's hear all about your job. What do you do? Do you enjoy it? How long have you worked there? What kind of stuff do you deal with on a daily bases? What are the pros and cons of the job? What's the best and/or worst thing you've had to do/deal with at the job? Are you working there for a career, to make ends meet, or to save up for schooling for a better job? Join us and share. We'd love to hear all about it.

Please remember that all HEX Terms apply. In addition to this, if your first post meets the minimum standard of three sentences, you will be eligible for a ticket to our monthly bi-weekly chat drawing for House Points, as put forth in this post. All posts for this chat are due by 11:59 PM on May 18th, HEX time, to be eligible for the drawing.

Well, I've been retired from my career with the U.S. Forest Service for almost five years. I worked for the agency for about 35 years and had the opportunity to do many different jobs - timber sale preparations, timber stand data collection, tree planting, botany, and writing environmental documents. It was very satisfying, I got to spend most of those 35 years in the woods, and I was able to retire with a pension and health insurance.
Currently I work one day a week at an outdoor clothing/equipment store. I enjoy interacting with customers and helping them find the gear they need to enjoy outdoor pursuits. I also kept my firefighting qualifications from my Forest Service career and occasionally support wildland firefighting efforts as a support dispatcher.

I'm a cleaner at my local hospital, it's ok there's good days and bad days like with any job I suppose.

Quote: How long have you worked there? What kind of stuff do you deal with on a daily bases?

I've worked there 10 years. We clean toilets, empty bins and change the bags, we mop floors and wipe literally everything on the ward (except the patient) lol. Sometimes we have infection rooms, so we need to wear surgical masks and aprons to protect ourselves, I've gotten ill a few times working there but only lasts a few days.

Quote: What are the pros and cons of the job? What's the best and/or worst thing you've had to do/deal with at the job?

Pros are great money, great pention and great supervisors. Cons are we get treated by crap by nurses, doctors and consultants coz they think they are better than us. I don't have a best thing except when I get to work with a friend or the ward is empty then it's good. The worst thing is when I use to work on A+E and someone had wiped poop all over the wall and I had to clean it up, I almost threw up lol

Quote: Are you working there for a career, to make ends meet, or to save up for schooling for a better job?

I'm there coz I won't get this kind of money anywhere else, I don't have qualifications so I can't do a lot of jobs.

I don't work in the normal sense. My job is full-time mum to my rowdy two-year-old, and it really is a big job. I love it more than anything I've ever done, though. I'm glad I don't have a real job - between my disabilities and all I find the idea quite terrifying. We'll lose our benefit at the end of this year if I'm not at least looking for work, so I need to decide what's next. I have a diploma in proofreading so I'm hoping to do that professionally. It'll probably be a slow start. My dream would be to open a games store where people could come and play and buy dice and all.

Join the Adventure - Follow Newt! 🦔 // Everything you’ve ever wanted is on the other side of fear.

3rd year Witch

Status: Offline

Age: 18

Posts: 7,061

I don't work full-time yet as I'm a student, but I have worked several summerjobs. Basically from the first moment I was legally allowed to work. I've worked as a dishwasher, cashier and administrative worker at three different places, with varying degrees of succes. This year, I'm hoping to find a summer job that is more suited to the degree I'm hoping to get, so it can add to work experience in a field I'm actually interested in. Maybe help me in the future or something. I should probably get to applying soon though, now that I'm thinking about it.

"Good night, and have a pleasant tomorrow" - SNL. Have a wonderful morning, afternoon, evening, and night!

5th year Witch

Status: Online

Age: 55

Posts: 2,709

Hello everyone! I am a special education teacher and run a computer lab for students with severe disabilities. The students use specialized software, and a few students use adapted mice-like devices that are round switches. The switches only act like a single left-click and are good for students who are learning that pressing the switch/mouse makes something happen on the computer screen (usually a short full-screen animation with upbeat music works best). I have iPads (that I bought myself) for classes who cannot come up the stairs to my lab. I also purchased much of the software and online subscriptions that my students use. Although all of the students are classified as having a severe disability, the difficulty could be more emotional and less learning challenges so I often teach students who know how to read one period and students who do not know how to speak the next class.

It is exciting but exhausting! I am getting tired of putting in ten-hour days and hearing politicians and others say that we only work thirty hours a week. They forget about all of the paperwork, planning, organizing materials, etc. that teachers have to do. The building closes at 6:00, three hours after that students leave. I am far from the only teacher who leaves at that time.

Thank you, HEX, for giving me an excuse to take short breaks from my computer work. I never HEX when students are in the room unless it is my lunch break anyway.

I used to be a special ed teacher. I loved it. Loved the kids, loved everything except the admins, lol. Now I am a home care giver for an elderly parent with dementia. It is not exciting and sometimes disgusting, but necessary. It has its ups. I know it helps my mother and eases some of her burden, Plus it gives me a lot of time to Hex!

I work as a QA (quality assurance) in a company that developes mobile game apps, and I really love my job. Not only the work itself - though I do enjoy it! I get a lot of satisfaction whenever I find a bug XD But no, what makes my job great is the atmosphere and the great people I work with. I truly have fun seeing these people, laughing and working with them every day ^_^

The minus side is that my days are very long. I struggle with "having a life" before and after work, and my HEXing time has also gone down since I started working. But that's life... The plus side is that I work only five days of the week, so I get to enjoy long weekends. I seriously enjoy it so much, I don't even remember what it was like to have a job where you work six days of the week!

I'm hoping to stay in this career path and to also evolve - learn more tools, develope more skills that I can use as a QA.. Maybe some day reach the position of Automation QA, though I'll have to do a lot of learning before that happens ~

I am retired now. Before that I had two different jobs. I worked for the police and later for the government. I went to college to be a police officer. When I got into it I discovered it was both rewarding and very stressful.
The funniest thing that happened was responding to a call from an older woman. She answered the door with a wire garbage can over her head. There was a bird in her house. Why she called the police I will never know. We got the bird out and left. It was all I could do, not to laugh. When we got back into the cruiser I doubled over laughing.
You have to be able to deal with all kinds of situations. You never know what you will walk into.
Twenty years later I got a job with the government. It was good money, but no challenge. It was the same thing day after day. I reached the requirements to retire and did, I do not miss it. I like jobs that have a challenge to them. It was a wide variety of things that I did each day...but still the same thing. The good thing was I could take my headphones in and listen to the radio all day. It made the day go faster.

I'm a vet working in a small animals clinic. Most of out patients are cats and dogs, but also rabbits, guinea pigs and other rodents and the occasional bird or reptile.
It can be a very stressful job, on several levels. The hours are longer than your average work day, including emergencies at night and weekends, the pay isn't exactly great, some of the patients and their owners can be... challenging, let's call it, sometimes it's emotionally challenging. But I wouldn't want to trade my job for any other. The feeling of helping an animal that can't help itself, that's great. Occasionally, I can literally save lives, and that's something you never forget. Of course, things don't always work out perfectly but when they do... that outweighs every sleepless night, scratched hand and irritable word. That's what keeps me going.
And let's face it, things never get boring. I've had to force-feed an irritable king python, lure a scared cat from on top of a wardrobe, held a beating heart in my hand and delivered all sorts of baby creatures and witnessed countless first and last breaths. You never know what the day may bring.

You either die a hero, or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain.

1st year Witch

Status: Offline

Age: 21

Posts: 516

I'm currently studying at college so I don't have a job. I will be applying to get a summer job, but college is my top priority at the moment. I've been at college since September 2018 and I still have a year left. I really enjoy it. I went to college when I was 16 but dropped out due to health issues. Also, I wasn't really paying any attention to my studies at that time. I had a really poor work ethic and I didn't care about my future. Now, I'm getting straight A's and B's. I'm attending all my classes and I'm participating in extracurricular activities. I've really grown since I last set foot in a college.

Most of my learning happens inside the classroom, 25% out. Lessons can be difficult in terms of scheduling, especially Thursday's (I have three hours of English Lit and then three hours of English Lang!) Other than that, it's a really great environment to be in. The college is supportive and my classmates are nice. After I finish college, I'll be moving on to university to study politics. I'm not sure which university I would like to go to yet; I'm still exploring my options. I would like to enter into a career with the civil service. I'm flexible with my career options at the moment but I do know I would prefer to have a public sector role.

I am a youth worker, and currently work with a group of teenagers who have disengaged from education/the community. I work with them to support them to gain skills a lot of them miss out on, from literacy and numeracy to basic hygiene and communication. It can be very tough at times, because a lot of them have pretty dang good reasons that school didn't work out for them! However I do really love it and love supporting the young people.

However at the same time my job is difficult for other reasons, my boss is a terrible micromanger, my pay is quite awful, and it can be very emotionally challenging. I am sticking it out because of how much I love the actual work with the young people - but all the other side of my job has been wearing me down bit by bit!

The best part of my job is the success stories. When I have worked with a young person from them facing severe mental health issues, among other things - but at the end of the program they have become more confident and happier, and are able to go out and get a job (and keep it!).
Even just the little wins mean a lot to me, for eg. the other day I was talking to a parent on the phone and she was just talking about how her child will actually come out of his room and talk to the family which he never used to do.

@Galadriel Thestral I know exactly what you mean with teaching! My partner is a teacher and he works more than I do, is always bringing work home and working on weekends. Yet everyone always goes on and on about how teachers only work 6 hours a day and get so many holidays. Yeh nah it's not true.

I work in an office where I get to do lots of paper work. The advantage of this type of job is your off weekends and holidays just like everyone else. As with any job there are good days when I like it and bad days when everything seems to go wrong.

What do you do? My official title is Client Support Administrator.
Do you enjoy it? Yes, I do. It is a very interested job.
How long have you worked there? I am brand new at this job!
What kind of stuff do you deal with on a daily bases? I am still in the training stage but the job involves ensuring that systems and processes are running correctly.
What are the pros and cons of the job? Interesting and challenge work - pro. Unsociable hours - con.

I am an assistant librarian at my city library. I do love it, for the most part. There are some days when I want to quit, but....I've been working here about 3 1/2 years, which makes it the job I've had the longest.

There's the normal stuff like checking books in and out, recommending books, etc. I occasionally help get crafts ready for our kids programs. Rarely, I help people with genealogy. Oh yeah, I help people use the computers too. Usually just helping them log into their email or print something. Other than that, I am in charge of overdue and lost notices, requesting interlibrary loans, updating computers, and making sure the inventory is up to date. I also work on what I call my dead people book (where I keep track of all births and deaths in the county) and blind books (which are really just large print books that are loaned to us from another library). Right now I'm trying to go through all of our book sale books before summer reading programs start up to see if we can sell them online.

The pros and cons are that I get to deal with people CONSTANTLY. Which is nice and all, but I am extremely introverted and at the end of each shift, I'm just completely mentally exhausted. Another pro/con is that (obviously) I'm always surrounded by books. And there's a LOT of interesting sounding books out there. How is that a con? Well, Since I've started working at the library, I've been adding books to my 'to read' list on a daily basis, but I don't have the time to read. So my list juts keeps getting longer and longer.

The best thing about the job is all of the new people I've met. Mostly the little kids. I've had kids color pictures and give them to me, bring me little rocks that they've painted. I even had one girl make me sit on the floor with her while she 'read' to me in Serbian.
The worst thing that happened actually happened last week. We have a room that we rent out in the back for people who need a meeting room or need some place for a baby shower or something... well apparently the lady who had the room rented was told the wrong information about how much renting the room would cost. When I told her what the price SHOULD be, and explained why, she ripped me out and told me that I had a horrible education and can't do math... I was in tears the rest of the day.

I applied for the job originally as something to tide me over until I found a job in the field I studied in college (Earth Science). But as I said, I've been here 3 years now. And I love it, but I also want a job where I don't deal with people all the time. And when I can leave my desk and use the restroom if I need to.

I work in a supermarket. It's very stressful and tiring. I like the sense of satisfaction when we get the job done well, but it can be a struggle to achieve. Also, I really struggle with dealing with a lot of customers, who can be extremely rude. Fortunately, they are only the minority, but it never feels like that.

I'm not new (just busy) but my HEX mentor and Newbie Knowledge helped me a lot when I was new.

3rd year Witch

Status: Offline

Age: 33

Posts: 1,011

I;m a teaching assistant with kids with severe disabilities. I started as a school aide, then a teacher's aid, and I passed the test to become a teaching assistant! I'm also a college student, so I don't have as much time as I used to. Thanks HEX, for getting me used to classes again! I don't want to be a teacher, but it would be nice to finish my batchelor's degree. It's tough sometimes fitting everything in, but I manage. I even travel with my hubby and friends/family a lot! I've gone off topic.

I like helping people, but I've seen folk get hurt, so I'm as careful as I can and still do my job.

I stopped working just over four years ago. Before that I worked as an art dealer and art consultant. I organised art exhibitions, bought and sold artworks (mainly paintings and sculptures), and designed exhibition catalogues and websites. I still own a lot of artworks. They always say that an art dealer's unsold stock becomes their collection. I am happy with what I own, because I never bought any artworks that I did not actually like. So, I can say that I am content with the pieces that are now in my collection.

The board is set, the pieces are moving. We come to it at last, the great battle of our time.

4th year Witch

Status: Offline

Age: 77

Posts: 34,257

When I was in my early 30's I found I needed to get a job so I took a state sponsored course in food handling and preparation. The goal was to become a Food Service Supervisor. I passed the course with flying colors and was hired at an area hospital. My first position was as a belt supervisor, I controlled the belt as it moved down a line with people who stood next to it putting the foods ordered by the patient for the meal on the tray.

Standing at the end of the line, I checked to make sure each item chosen was present before the hot food got loaded into a heated compartment and the cold food on the tray was slid into the refrigerator compartment. I will never forget my first day on my own. I was very nervous so It took me longer than usual but I was very happy to be told, when the breakfast period was over, that I hadn't made any mistakes.

I must say I enjoyed the work, the dietician who ran the kitchen was happy with me and I got along very well with eveyone in the department. I worked there for 20 years. I began as belt supervisor, then supervised the cold foods department and finally I was supervisor for the cooks, the cooking area, scheduling, taking inventory and ordering what was needed. The only bad thing about the job was getting there. I lived far from the hospital and travel time was an hour. In the winter time, it often took longer. Occasionally I had to call my replacement when the snow and ice were impassible. I've been retired now for 32 years and Iove it even more than I liked working.